i take the lake path to work and today on my bike in, about two miles of the path smelled like chocolate! the wind must have hit the blommers chocolate factory at exactly the right angle, sending the scent of chocolate drifting east to the lake. the u.s. is so obsessed with hygiene that we are all olfactorily(new word!) deprived here. one rarely encounters any sort of exciting non-automobile fumes just wandering around the city. sure, there's blommers, that weird perfume factory on west touhy and the fortune cookie factory on the southwest side, but those are destination scents...you rarely just stumble upon blommers unless you work by the river or really like that architectural boat tour. in india, i encountered a new smell every five feet and granted some of those scents were rather unpleasant, it was exciting to have so many different smells coming at me all of the time...what a change! as for chicago, i guess for now i'll stick to the occasionally quirky windpattern that sends blommers towards me.